Harry Potter author helps lone parents

By Sean O'Neill

12:00AM BST 04 Oct 2000

HARRY POTTER, perhaps the best known orphan in the world, comes to the aid of single parents today.

J K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter children's stories which have sold millions of copies, is to become an ambassador for the National Council for One Parent Families. She has also arranged for a share of profits from her books to be donated to the charity, which is expected to receive a six-figure sum.

Miss Rowling, 34, wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first of the series, while she was a single mother living in a "mouse-infested" flat in Edinburgh on £70 per week income support and money borrowed from friends. Six years later she is reputed to be Britain's highest paid woman, with earnings close to £20.5 million last year.

She said: "I am proud to be the new ambassador for the Ncopf. We come from all walks of life and we want exactly the same things that parents living in couples want, the chance to provide properly for our own children."